Photo: Peter Župník Platforma Obywatelska [PO, the Civic Platform] has been in power for 16 months. It has avoided major blunders but also major successes. Perhaps it is for the best: it is terrifying to think what might have happened if the government had managed to push its election promises through Parliament during the months following the election and if the global crisis had hit us at the early, painful stages of reforms, and well before their benefits (if any) had been felt. In the course of these 16 months the PO came up with a number of ideas, decisions […]

The latest joke from Hungary says as part of its cost-cutting measures the government has now switched off the light at the end of the tunnel. But seriously, the situation in Hungary is dire and people with consumer credit and mortgages are among those most badly affected. Years of living on credit have had a negative impact on the whole of society, on its standard of living as well as its confidence. When President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown tried to find a particularly contemptible and frightening word to exemplify the current economic crisis the one that came […]

He has been dubbed the Slovak Putin and the European Chávez. He has shown a marked tendency to authoritarianism and formed a cabinet with extreme nationalists and the former Prime Minister Mečiar who had brought the country to the brink of dictatorship. While local elites regard Fico as a threat to democracy, ordinary citizens adore him and his Czech counterpart Paroubek looks up to him as a role model. Will the real Robert Fico please stand up? Summing up Slovakia’’s current Prime Minister ought not be too difficult a task. Fico is a spectre from the Mečiar era. He’’s a politician who […]

S Margriet de Moor o príbehoch, feminizme, láske k Strednej Európe a Kreutzerovej sonáte. Když jsem se na vás ptal literárních znalců a vašich známých, bylo zajímavé, že nikdo si nebyl jistý, kde vlastně bydlíte. Hodně se stěhujete. Souvisí to nějak s psaním? Život spisovatele je nomádský, nevydrží nikdy dlouho na jednom místě. Je to ale úděl, který jsem si zvolila, takže se kvůli svým knihám ráda toulám. Jednou za čas si sbalím věci a vydám se na cestu, přestěhuji se. Samotné psaní právě dobře zrcadlí pocit z cestování, jako byste se vydal na neznámé území. Snad bych ani nevydržela sedět doma v křesle, […]

  Photo: Peter Župník Sometime in the early nineties I found myself in New York on a business trip with a friend of mine. My friend is a playwright but at that point he was being president. He is quite keen on films and music so I thought it might be an idea for us to go and see Woody Allen. Woody is a film maker but he’s also fond of music and has written a few plays too. We rang the bell of Woody’s Fifth Avenue apartment but he was not in.  It occurred to me that he might […]

Jsem připraven odejít jako euroskeptik do výslužby. Evropská unie má potíže. Místo uculování jsem ale zděšen. Když jsem v lednu 2001 přicestoval do Bruselu, měl jsem na unii několik pevných a nepříznivých názorů. Domníval jsem se, že většina obyčejných Evropaně cítí mnohem větší loajalitu k vlastnímu státu než k Evropě. Myslel jsem si, že trvalé rozšiřování pravomocí Bruselu je nebezpečné. Soudil jsem, že v době krize se stejně dostanou do popředí nacionalistické instinkty. Měl jsem tušení, že společná měna zákonitě narazí na problémy. A také jsem věřil, že bruselská elita představuje novou třídu, která si plete vlastní zájmy se zájmy […]

One year after a new media law in Slovakia passed almost unamended – despite a stormy debate and protests from the media community – the Hungarian parliament is discussing a bill which journalists and civil society fears will curtail media freedom. In the Czech Republic a media law has been in force for nearly ten years  but recently, following a number of media scandals involving Czech politicians, all political parties have backed the draft of  a new law which would criminalize journalists for using material based on leaked police sources. The following survey sums up the response of the beleaguered media in the three Central […]

Karaoke (from the Japanese word meaning ‘‘empty orchestra’) is a form of entertainment for millions of people who would like to be Madonna or Sinatra. The amateur crooner, a wannabe Madonna or Sinatra, replaces the original singer whose voice is turned down or completely switched off, and performs instead of the original. The amateur singer does not even need to know the lyrics which can be read off the screen. The karaoke machine was invented in the early seventies by Japanese musician Daisuke Inoue. Inoue never had his invention patented, allowing others to collect the revenues his idea has been […]

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’’s all.” I was reminded of this passage in Lewis Carroll’‘s Through the Looking Glass? last autumn, when Czech and international media were inundated with reactions to the article in the Czech weekly Respekt that mentioned a document from the early 1950s according to which writer Milan Kundera had […]

An excerpt from Roman Daszczyński’’s interview with writer Stefan Chwin prompted by the recent discovery, in the northern Polish fortress city of Malbork, of a mass grave from the final days of World War II. When the grave was discovered as foundations were being laid for a new hotel, the local authorities’’ initial reaction was to cover up the burial site of nearly 2,000 Germans and keep building the hotel. However, heavy rains washed up more human bones, prompting an international scandal (for more information click here and here). Stefan Chwin:  – If at all technically possible, the bones should […]